Delpit, L. (2006). Other people’s children: Cultural
conflict in the classroom. New York: The New Press.
Education reflects the
diversity of values and beliefs found in American society and it is the
behavior that results when ideas produce social action that is of utmost
importance when attempting to assess the complexity of reform
recommendations. Recognizing the complex origins and manifestations of
knowledge and behavior, Lisa Delpit’s work, Other People’s Children,
is part of the Sociology of Knowledge theoretical approach that focuses on the
role language plays in constructing social meaning and determining educational
behavior. Delpit believes that the “most difficult tasks we face as human
beings is communicating meaning across our individual differences, a task
confounded immeasurable when we attempt to communicate across social, racial,
cultural lines or lines of unequal power. We all carry worlds in our
heads, and those worlds are decidedly different.” (Pg. 66)
Delpit’s work focuses on
the primary role of educators, especially teachers, in understanding and
respecting the multiple cultural lenses that are part of a diverse
school. The current system is dominated by narrow set of values and
beliefs that are not shared or understood by those currently outside this
culture. Students of color and poor students are largely alienated from
the system because their values and beliefs are not respected or valued by
teachers whose own classroom behavior and pedagogy are narrow reflections of
the values and beliefs of their own world. These teacher patterns of
behavior are part of a deeply embedded set of values and beliefs that have not
been critically interrogated for their cross-cultural appropriateness.
She writes that “we all interpret behaviors, information, and situations
through our own cultural lenses. These lenses operate involuntarily,
below the level of conscious awareness, making it seem that our own view is
simply the way it is. Learning to interpret across cultures demands
reflecting on our own experiences, analyzing our own cultures, examine and
comparing perspectives. We must consciously and voluntarily make our
culture lenses apparent. Engaging in the hard work of seeing the world as
other see it must be a fundamental goal for any move to reform the education of
teachers and their assessment.” (Pg. 15) In order to support the kind of
education Delpit beliefs is needed to support the development of communicative
competence in students, teacher training program must prepare teachers to
understand the power of meaning that is part of one’s language and to teach
students to work in a world where different languages are understood,
celebrated, and respected. Teachers must be willing and committed to “teaching
all students and when they understand that through their teaching change can
occur, then the chance for transformation is great.” (Pg. 166) Once teachers
are capable of delivering this kind of classroom pedagogy, they can help
construct an educational system that offers all students an education that
values human dignity and also creates the opportunity for all students to
succeed. Other People’s Children challenges teachers to
play the primary role in created this kind of educational experience.
Methodology and
Conceptual Framework
Drawing on her personal
life experiences and upbringing, case studies from four years spent in an
Alaskan Eskimo village and a year at the Vilis Tokple Schools in Papa New
Guinea, and her professional teaching role, Delpit’s ethnography focuses on the
complex existence of cultural consciousness and the power one’s consciousness
has over one’s behavior. Eloquently written, passionate and persuasive, the
ethnographic study is largely dominated by Delpit’s voice. Delpit’s four
years in Papa New Guinea, for instance, gave her the opportunity to do in-depth
field work and the data generated a series of personal reflection about life in
a different cultural milieu. Delpit’s ethnography is primarily a
constructivist approach in the spirit of the Sociology of Knowledge
tradition. She focuses on language as the chief source of meaning making
and her field work experience provided her with a rich amount of cross-cultural
data that she uses to more fully develop the relationship between language and
meaning.
While Delpit is
concerned with the existence of inequality in society and the role schools play
in perpetuating this inequality, she does not explain the origins of unequal
power relationships as economic in nature. The origins of class and
racial inequality are found in the codes of power that are intimately tied to
language meaning and usage. These codes are similar to the
taken-for-granted beliefs or tacit knowledge that Bowers talks about in The
Promise of Theory. Intimately tied to the dominant race and class,
these largely unexplored attitudes, values and beliefs are the foundation of a
system that has disempowered the voices of minorities and the poor.
Rather than abolish the current educational system, Delpit believes “students
must be taught the codes needed to participate fully in the mainstream of
American life.” (Pg. 43) It is the human dynamic that changes in the context of
the existing educational system.
Delpit constructs an
educational reform approach that will potentially open the educational system
to poor students and students of color. Delpit builds her argument around
the concept “culture of power” and develops this concept by analyzing
“linguistic forms, communicative strategies, and presentation of self.”
(Pg. 25) Delpit believes that the culture of power reflect the dominant
white language and these codes insulate the existing power structure.
Because the teaching profession is dominated by white professionals and their
corresponding monocultural cultural worldview, their inability to understand
and appreciate other cultures acts to alienate non-whites to the degree that
they (non-whites) are essentially closed out of the existing educational
system. Delpit believes this “sense of being cheated can be so strong
that the students may be completely turned off to the educational
system.” (Pg. 32)
In order to break into
this existing structure, students of color must be given equal opportunity to
access the language of these codes. This can happen when white teachers
are able to understand that their monocultural world shuts non-whites out of
code acquisition. Teachers can be the “source of knowledge necessary for
students to learn the forms they need to succeed.” (Pg. 32) It
requires teachers to move to multiple levels of consciousness or to
multiculturalism. Delpit argues that when cultures move from contending to
complimentary cultures all students will benefit from the educational system
that is a reflection of the existing culture. Until then, this powerful
monoculturalism has a debilitating effect on not only on students, but
professional colleagues of color.
However, Delpit knows
the dominant culture and corresponding codes will not wither away even if there
is a complimentary culture. She believes “each cultural group should have
the right to maintain its own language style.” (Pg. 39)
Thus, while teachers are challenged to rise above their
monocultural world, they are also expected to return to this world in order to
provide students the kinds of education white students receive. She
states that teachers should “accept students in their own cultural environment
but take responsibility to teach them in a different cultural
environment.” (Pg. 38)
Delpit’s conception of
multiculturalism is actually in conflict with many of the practices that have
been developed to ostensibly address the needs of minorities and the poor.
Indeed early in her teaching career, Delpit realized that her teacher
preparation program did a disservice to precisely those students who were
already most disempowered. Delpit contends that popular progressive
pedagogies--open classrooms, whole language and process writing--while claiming
to represent the best learning styles of children of color, do not in fact
match the learning needs of the African-American students and other culturally
and linguistically diverse students with whom she did ethnographies. That kind of classroom creates the “sense of
being cheated.” (Pg. 35) Referencing child deficit theories, Delpit
sees these programs leading to teaching less instead of more and lowering
expectations for children of color and the poor, mistaken assumptions and
misguided intentions that have an adverse effect on children of color and the
poor.
Delpit believes teachers need to be explicit and clear in providing the kind of
instruction that ensures the school provides their children (children of color)
with discourse patterns, interactional styles, and spoken and written language
codes that will allow them success in the larger society. (Pg. 29)
Delpit writes that “explicit works when the teacher has a relationship with the
student.” (Pg. 35) Teachers need to “push students to think” and this can
only happen in a classroom where there is mutual respect, authority that is
earned through action, and authentic student-teacher relationships.
Indeed, Delpit believes that “black children expect an authority figure to act
with authority.” (Pg. 35)
Ultimately “teachers can
make the difference.” (Pg. 159) She believes that teachers must be
sensitive to “language and its appropriate use. Teachers need to support
the language that students bring to school, provide them input from an
additional code, and give them the opportunity to use the new code in a
nonthreatening, real communicative context.” Delpit does not want
teachers to “put their beliefs on hold,” but to approach teaching diverse
student populations with “open hearts and open minds.” (Page 47)
When native Alaskan students were asked about the most important
characteristic of good teaching, they judge most positive quality was “being
human.” Delpit’s open classroom concept is one characterized by
intellectual rigor, meaningful exploration of the diversity of classroom
worlds, and an understanding that “subject matter is important, but
insufficient for teaching. Communication is more than content.”
(Pg. 138) Much like Bowers’ goal of developing communicative competence in
students, Delpit sees the classroom as a place where students are socialized to
interpret, understand, and appreciate the diversity of voices. The
classroom must be the place where this open, honest, human dialogue is encouraged
to exist.
The potential inherent
in all students will remain locked until we “learn to be vulnerable enough to
allow our work to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to
edge themselves into our consciousness.” (Page 47) Students become
active participants only when teachers become authentically multicultural and
human. Students have to be allowed to express themselves in their own language
style and teachers must come to understand and celebrate this diversity.
Eventually can all be “true ethnographers” of their worlds. (Pg. 48)
Delpit believes it is “not the children who must change, it is the school” and
presumably the teachers inside the school. (Pg. 37) Students should
actually be “encouraged to understand the value of the code they already
possess as well as to understand the power realities in this
country Teachers, on the other hand, must interpret across
cultures, expand one’s own “cultural lens,” and see the world as other see it.
(Pg. 151) The teacher is expected to rise above their monoculturalism,
yet understand that this culture serves as the foundation from which students
of color can attain the codes to succeed. As she states, “the language
associated with the power structure- Standard English – is the language of
economic success, and all students have the right to schooling that gives them
access to that language.” (Pg. 68) Ultimately, though, Delpit
acknowledges that the “most difficult tasks we face as human beings is
communicating meaning across our individual differences, a task confounded
immeasurable when we attempt to communicate across social, racial, cultural
lines or lines of unequal power.” (Pg. 66) Overcoming this most
difficult task is the challenge facing teachers, especially those from the dominant
culture.
Recommendations for
Reform
The key to this raised
level of consciousness is to “reconceptualize how we structure teacher
education.” (Pg. 125) Most teacher preparation programs lack
authentic learning opportunities essential to greater understanding of other
cultures and more appreciation of the dominant culture. Teacher
preparation and practice are intimately linked and Colleges of Education are
challenged to reevaluate their role in creating the kind of extraordinary
teachers Delpit believes essential to creating a classroom environment that
leads to authentic and necessary cross-cultural understanding.
Delpit offers a number of recommendations that she thinks would
fundamentally change teacher behavior and practice.
- Allow student teachers to bring in their prior
knowledge, stories and experiences to the subject matter. Do not
allow the subject matter to be the most important part of teacher
education. Standardized scores have little to say about one’s actual
ability.
- Empower teachers of color to provide voice to their
culture. This means white teachers have to become better listeners
and better humans.
- Find real contexts in which teachers can learn and
grow. Teachers must examine their own attitudes and beliefs.
- Look critically at the validity of popular teaching
strategies. These strategies may serve the dominant culture, but do
not help students of color.
- Broaden the scope of classroom observation or meet with
parents of students. Bring parents and the community into the classroom so
they can share their concerns about education.
- Send teams of culturally diverse student teachers to
observe, collect, and process data.
- Transition language from a premise of negativity to one
of positivity. Delpit’s perspective is that teachers focus their
efforts on the 25% who did not succeed, rather than analyzing the reasons
75% did succeed.
- Attract and retain a more racially diverse teacher
population. Empower teachers of color to be collegial in sharing
their culture with white teachers.
- Critically analyze the appropriateness of a Eurocentric
curriculum that is a reflection of the dominate culture and
language.
Common to this reconceptualization
are strong beliefs in the value of sharing cultural experiences, finding a
greater connection between theory and reality, listening and respecting other
voices, and open, honest dialogue about the ways to motivate students alienated
from the current educational system. It represents a huge challenge to
teachers, especially white teacher who Delpit contends are unaware that their
moncultural consciousness has produced such a deep degree of student
alienation. The transition from a monocultural to a multicultural world
is a Herculean challenge but until this radical transformation in thought and
action happens in university classrooms across America, there will continue to
be “misinterpretations about competence, quality, and intent.” (Pg. 139)
Observations
This is a persuasive,
well-researched, and compelling call to action. In the tradition of the
Sociology of Language literature, its sophisticated treatment of language as
the primary source of knowledge acquisition and meaning making accurately
captures the complexity of the challenge facing educators and the education
system. The intellectual environment that has been constructed, the
conditions in which teachers and students learn, and the powerful attitudes,
values and beliefs that are the foundation of knowledge and subsequent social
behavior are indeed complex parts of an educational system that has not created
equal opportunity for all students. In its state of relative inertia and
unquestioned truth, education has been allowed to serve a rather narrow set of
interests and students. Delpit believes that education must rise above
this narrowness and address the diversity of values and beliefs that are found
within the entire educational system. Teachers of color combined with more
effective teacher preparation programs have the potential to lead the movement
to change the way teacher approach their craft.
It puts most of the onus
of leadership on teachers. Delpit has identified teachers as the one
group that has to be extraordinarily wise and aware of not only their own
cultural lenses, but the lenses of all students who are in their
classroom. She challenges teachers to “remove the blinders built of
stereotypes, monocultural instructional methodologies, ignorance, social distance,
biased research and racism.” Pg. 180) Teachers can make a difference, but the
nature of the commitment is far broader and more sophisticated than what the
system currently judges good teaching to be. How we, at least those in
the dominant class, judge a good teacher would change in the conception of
Delpit’s argument. The whole assembly line mindset of education would
drastically change if we accept Delpit’s construct of good teaching, Bowers
refers to it as processing students through the system. Delpit talks
about the “strength to teach our children what they must learn, and the
humility and wisdom to learn from them so that we might better teach them.”
(Pg. 183) I suspect many white teachers, and perhaps some of color would
argue that this is what they are doing, but if they truly understand what
Delpit means by humility and wisdom, they would probably have to reevaluate how
they approach and practice their craft. As stated previously,
subject matter is important, but insufficient for teaching. Communication
is more than content. Teachers must be extraordinary not in meeting state
mandates and preparing students for standardized tests, but in creating an
environment of human dignity and respect. Build a community of listeners
and work to ensure that voices are heard. At one point in the book Delpit
equates the teacher with the preacher. The successful preacher
demonstrates a depth of understanding that Delpit sees essential to good
teaching. Both must be passionate about their role and both must
understand the “cultural style of the constituencies being addressed.
(Pg. 137)
Perhaps recognizing that
the system is too powerful to abolish, Delpit has created a realistic theory
that actually recognizes that the origins of current power relationships are
found in deeply embedded values and beliefs and that given the proper
environment, all students can assess these values. Currently there are a
number of subsystems at work in American society, some more powerful than
others, and Delpit’s approach to knowledge acquisition goes through a number of
stages: 1) begins by creating an intellectual environment where sense is
made of these alternative systems, 2) through exposure students develop an
appreciation for the uniqueness of these competing systems, 3) students (and
teachers) begin to understand the nature of the values and beliefs that created
power relationships, and 4) there is either co-existent understanding and
respect or gradual melding of values, attitudes and beliefs. The system
does change and more people are given access to it, but the nature of change is
first led by intellectual transformation that will generate structural
change.
It is not the kind of
economically led overthrow envisioned by Marxist critical theorists and perhaps
an area of concern is that Delpit does not explore the pervasive influence the
economic system has on the power relationships that effect education.
Delpit might have broadened the nature of her work by looking more
closely at class status when discussing the existence of an unequal educational
system. Poor children, who could presumably be white, are treated like students
of color, even though their values and beliefs could be quite different.
The origins of this inequality may not be race based and thus recommendations
for changed that focus on multicultural understanding would not address the
origins of the inequality. (Willis, for instance, in Learning to
Labour has shown that class and race generate conflict between blue
collar lad (poor) and blacks (race).) Inequality whether race or class-based,
is an extremely complex issue and while most of Delpit’s work was subtle and
nuanced her approach to race and class needs greater discussion. While there
can be little argument that unequal power relationships greatly affect the
educational system, the nature of these relationships demanded a more varied
analysis. We are left to merely accept that they are not being served by the
inadequacies of a flawed educational system.
Delpit’s
reconceptualization of teacher training requires a leap of faith in the ability
of the education to broaden the nature of their program and
training. It assumes universities will respond to recommendations
for a new teacher training approach and that the system will value the greater
emphasis on interpersonal learning preparation as opposed to subject
knowledge. This is a system that has not demonstrated responsiveness to
calls for reform or change.
It is in that context,
that I am not convinced her approach goes nearly far enough in identifying the
fundamental reasons there is inequity in the current system. The origins
of unequal relationships of power might actually be found in an economic system
that determines consciousness and until the system is radically altered, nothing
will change. Educators who are thinking multiculturally will improve the
education students receive, but an approach to radical change that relies
predominately on the creation of communicative competence will wither under the
weight of an educational system that is the by-product of the economic,
political, and social system. If we accept Tyack’s argument, the
educational system owes its structure to the dominant class and an economic and
political system that largely served the need of this class. This
domination is perhaps so thoroughly embedded in American society that education
is relatively powerless to impact the system. Indeed, Delpit’s argument
about providing access to the codes of power is a realistic response to a
leviathan-like system. The old adage, “If you can’t beat them, join them”
seems somewhat applicable.
It might have been useful to hear more participant voices in this study.
She referred to minorities, but only spoke of black, Alaskan and Native
American minorities. What about Hispanics, Asians, Latinos, islanders, Arabs,
and the continual list of other minorities? A study on multiculturalism
would have been better served to include these other minority voices.
Additionally, there were no case studies done on the cultural world of poor
students. That would have been useful.
Teachers occupy an
essential place in Delpit’s educational reform plan and they are primary
socialization agents. However, teacher identity is also dependent on
powerful non-educational factors. Indeed, one could argue that cultural
identity is shaped by and dependent on changes in the economic, political and
social structure of American society. The educational system is a
reflection of the larger structure and philosophy of American society and until
there are changes to that macro structure, the educational system will continue
to be a source of frustration when we look to it for answers to why there
continues to be inequality in American society. Delpit provides a
compelling and beautifully articulated response to a broken American
educational system whose identity has been influenced, shaped, and dominated by
external forces and a language that reflects the attitudes of one group.
However, her reconceptualization of education needs to be combined with
structural changes to the economic and political system in order to see
substantive transformation in the lives of children of color and the
poor. These factors must be part of the movement for greater equality and
social justice for all students.
